Mystery Illness Kills at Least 17 in China - Yahoo! News

Mystery Illness Kills at Least 17 in China - Yahoo! News: "BEIJING - An unidentified illness has killed 17 farmers and sickened 41 others in southwestern China after they butchered sick pigs or sheep, China's official news agency said Sunday.

Those affected had symptoms including high fever, fatigue, nausea and vomiting, and 'became comatose later with bruises under the skin,' Xinhua news agency said.

Over the past four weeks, 58 people from areas around the cities of Ziyang and Neijiang in China's southwestern Sichuan province were hospitalized with such symptoms, Xinhua said."
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Odd...

Japanese robot guards to patrol shops, offices - Yahoo! News

Japanese robot guards to patrol shops, offices - Yahoo! News: "TOKYO (Reuters) - Burglars beware, robot guards are here.

In an idea straight out of science fiction, robots could soon begin patrolling Japanese offices, shopping malls and banks to keep them safe from intruders. Equipped with a camera and sensors, the 'Guardrobo D1,' developed by Japanese security firm Sohgo Security Services Co., is designed to patrol along pre-programmed paths and keep an eye out for signs of trouble."
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And you thought Protedyne was bad...

Nanotech advances need more safety screening-study - Yahoo! News

Nanotech advances need more safety screening-study - Yahoo! News: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Nanotechnology, an engineering science that holds hope for scores of new products and processes, is not being properly evaluated for human and environmental risks, a study released this week has found.

The rapidly evolving science, which involves scores of start-ups, corporations and universities seeking to engineer materials on a molecular level, carries both actual and perceived environmental, health and safety (EHS) risks.

But without a full and continuing assessment of those risks, the nascent industry expected to employ thousands of people and generate billions of dollars in revenue may be hobbled by public opposition or corporate mishaps, a study by investment house Lux Research concludes."
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Nanotech, lots of good and bad potential there.

'Super' bacteria live on sheets, fingernails: study - Yahoo! News

'Super' bacteria live on sheets, fingernails: study - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The mutated, drug-resistant 'superbugs' that cause an increasing number of hospital infections and deaths can live for weeks on bed linens, computer keyboard covers and under acrylic fingernails, U.S. researchers reported on Monday."
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Whoa. Probably caused by years of anti-bacterial soap.

Katan Associates Study Shows Long-Awaited Life Sciences Roll-Up Will Continue, as Pharma and Larger Biotechs Hustle to Fill Dwindling Pipelines

Katan Associates Study Shows Long-Awaited Life Sciences Roll-Up Will Continue, as Pharma and Larger Biotechs Hustle to Fill Dwindling Pipelines: "LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 2005--Katan Associates International

Asia and European Union will continue to be fertile breeding ground for M&A transactions

Biotech-driven acquisitions will remain at the forefront of deal activity

'Consolidation will continue among Pharma and Biotech in 2005, whether a true 'roll-up' occurs or not. This activity will be fueled by the need for Pharma to fill the pipeline and the need for Biotech to continue to gain critical mass,' says Seth Yakatan, MBA, Partner, Katan Associates International. 'While the United States has historically been the most active region for deals, Europe and Asia will provide fertile grounds for buyers, given value considerations and a strong lack of mezzanine and secondary capital providers in these markets.'"
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Interesting...

Israeli Companies Suspected of Spying - Yahoo! News

Israeli Companies Suspected of Spying - Yahoo! News: "JERUSALEM - It started out as a family feud. But a small-time computer break-in has erupted into Israel's biggest business scandal in decades, reaching into some of the country's powerful corporate suites and jolting the cozy world of the industrial elite.

Top Israeli blue chip companies, including a high-tech giant that trades in New York, are suspected of using illicit surveillance software to steal information from their rivals and enemies."
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And we were all worried about the Koreans stealing biotech secrets.

Scientists Experiment With 'Trust' Hormone - Yahoo! News

Scientists Experiment With 'Trust' Hormone - Yahoo! News: "t sounds like the plot for another Batman sequel: The villain sprays Gotham City with a trust hormone and people rush to give him all their money. Banks, the stock market and even governments collapse.

Farfetched? Swiss and American scientists demonstrate in new experiments how a squirt of the hormone oxytocin stimulates trusting behavior in humans, and they acknowledge that the possibility of abuse can't be ignored."
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Maybe we can have potions in a modern day setting...

Particle Accelerator Used to Decipher Text - Yahoo! News

Particle Accelerator Used to Decipher Text - Yahoo! News: "BALTIMORE - A particle accelerator is being used to reveal the long-lost writings of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, work hidden for centuries after a Christian monk wrote over it in the Middle Ages.

Highly focused X-rays produced at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center were used last week to begin deciphering the parts of the 174-page text that have not yet been revealed. The X-rays cause iron in the hidden ink to glow.

'One of the delightful things is we don't know what it's going to say,' said William Noel, head of the Archimedes Palimpsest project at the Walters Art Gallery."
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I think we all know what it will say: hidden treasure! Then some adventure seeking treasure hunter will decipher the clues and solve the puzzle while being chased by gun toting thugs.

Major advance in stem cell research / Controversial step in regenerative medicine reported

Major advance in stem cell research / Controversial step in regenerative medicine reported: "Biologists in South Korea reported Thursday the creation of the first stem cell lines engineered to carry the DNA of patients with chronic disease and injury, a development hailed by some as perhaps the most significant technical advance for regenerative medicine since stem cells were isolated from human embryos in 1998."
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Pretty wild. They must put patient DNA in host embryo's (like they do with frog oocytes) and get them to differentiate. That way the cells match the host and could potentially be used as implants.

'Brain' In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer

'Brain' In A Dish Acts As Autopilot, Living Computer: "GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida scientist has grown a living 'brain' that can fly a simulated plane, giving scientists a novel way to observe how brain cells function as a network.

The 'brain' -- a collection of 25,000 living neurons, or nerve cells, taken from a rat's brain and cultured inside a glass dish -- gives scientists a unique real-time window into the brain at the cellular level. By watching the brain cells interact, scientists hope to understand what causes neural disorders such as epilepsy and to determine noninvasive ways to intervene. As living computers, they may someday be used to fly small unmanned airplanes or handle tasks that are dangerous for humans, such as search-and-rescue missions or bomb damage assessments."
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Whoa. Artificial brains. Flying jets in a flight sim. If that doesn't give you plot ideas, then you perhaps writing isn't for you. Perhaps you would be happier doing something else--like bowling.

Protein Music

Computational Biology : UWA Computer Science: "ProteinMusic is a Java program converting DNA sequences into music. The original idea for this project came from R. D. King here at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and C. G Angus from the Shamen (King, R.D. & Angus, C.G. (1996)). They developed a program written in C on an Apple Mac together with a MIDI connection to a synthesizer in 1996. This program here is a complete re-write of the original program in Java. by A. Karwath. "
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Weird, wild stuff.

Researchers Find Largest 'Gene Deserts' in Human Genome

Welcome to GenomeWeb Daily News Wrapping up Chromosomes 2 and 4, Researchers Find Largest 'Gene Deserts' in Human Genome
By a GenomeWeb staff reporter

NEW YORK, April 6 (GenomeWeb News) - After analyzing chromosomes 2 and 4, a research consortium supported by the National Human Genome Research Institute announced this week that it has discovered the largest "gene deserts" in the human genome, and determined the location of an ancestral chromosomal fusion event.

Led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the analysis, to be published in the April 7 issue of Nature, shows that the largest gene deserts, or regions of the genome devoid of protein-coding genes, are located in chromosome 4.

According to a statement released by NHGRI, little is known of the function of gene deserts, but they are thought to be important as they occur in other mammalian genomes as well as in birds.

NHGRI said that chromosome 4 is of interest to the medical community because it holds the gene for Huntington's disease and other inherited disorders.

The team also discovered a 36,000-base-pair stretch of sequence in chromosome 2 that it believes is the site of the fusion that created chromosome 2 from what were previously two separate, smaller chromosomes.

Chromosome 2 is the second largest human chromosome, and scientists have speculated that a fusion of two chromosomes in a human ancestor rendered humans with 23 chromosomes, compared to the 24 chromosomes found in gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and other great apes, NHGRI said.
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It may be a gene desert, but it is a plot breadbasket! Let your imagination come up with ideas for all that data. Leftover bits of evolution? Encoded messages from aliens? God? The Illuminati? The key to the next step of evolution? Who knows?

Yahoo! News - Computers Obeying Brain Signals

Yahoo! News - Computers Obeying Brain Signals: "By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

ALBANY, N.Y. - Researchers and volunteers around the world are taking early steps toward a complex but straightforward technological goal: to use electrical signals from the brain as instructions to computers and other machines, allowing paralyzed people to communicate, move around and control their environment literally without moving a muscle."
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Very interesting article. I've tried something like that and it was quite the experience. We are getting closer and closer to science fiction here. Soon we'll have the powered battle armor from Starship Troopers and direct neural links to control our vehicles. And best of all, people whose bodies won't let them communicate the way most of us can will be able to.

Yahoo! News - Oil Platforms May Be Used for Fish Farms

Yahoo! News - Oil Platforms May Be Used for Fish Farms: "By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS - Thousands of oil and natural gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico could be converted into deep-sea fish farms raising red snapper, mahi mahi, yellow fin tuna and flounder, under a plan backed by the Bush administration."
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If Bush is backing it, you know it has to be in the best interest of the environment. On the up-side though, there is a good chance the fish will mutate horribly, crawl up on the platform and wreak havok leading to a runaway bestseller with lucrative movie rights.

Yahoo! News - NASA Turns to Mexican Lake for Clues to Alien Life

Yahoo! News - NASA Turns to Mexican Lake for Clues to Alien Life: "By Tim Gaynor

CUATRO CIENEGAS, Mexico (Reuters) - With cobalt waters harboring eerie, coral-like formations, this archipelago of lakes in Mexico's searing Chihuahuan desert has always had an other-worldly appearance.



Now top researchers at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration say the calcified clumps of primitive bacteria lurking in its pools could provide important clues in their search for extraterrestrial life.

The network of 170 cactus-ringed lagoons around the town of Cuatro Cienegas have intrigued evolutionary biologists for decades because their fish, snail and turtle species rival the Galapagos Islands in their uniqueness.

Scientists from NASA's Astrobiology Institute have begun studying the lakes' ancient formations called stromatolites -- rock structures formed by layers of algae that trap silt. Conditions within the stromatolites are similar to those that prevailed on Earth for more than 2 billion years before the dinosaurs evolved.

Studying their organisms could help NASA identify the unique atmospheric conditions created by primitive life on planets orbiting nearby stars and help settle the question of whether we are alone in the universe.

'They may be our best example of what to look for on other planets,' said Brad Bebout, a researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center, as he prepared to harvest methane belched out by the organisms in a shallow blue-green pool.

'Most of the time that life has been on Earth, this is what it looked like, not like the plants and animals that you see around you now,' he added."
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I always knew there were strange new worlds to explore down south of here...

Photoaffinity labeling analysis of the interaction of pituitary adenylate-cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) with the PACAP type I receptor

Photoaffinity labeling analysis of the interaction of pituitary adenylate-cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) with the PACAP type I receptor -- Cao et al. 244 (2): 400 -- FEBS Journal: "YJ Cao, E Kojro, G Gimpl, M Jasionowski, F Kasprzykowski, L Lankiewicz and F Fahrenholz
Max-Planck-Institut fur Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

To identify residues and domains of the peptide hormone pituitary adenylate-cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) that interact with the type I receptor, two photoreactive analogues of PACAP-(1-27)-peptide were synthesized using solid-phase peptide synthesis. Phe6 or Tyr22 within the PACAP sequence were replaced by p-benzoyl-L-phenylalanine (Bz-Phe) thus creating two PACAP derivatives with a photoreactive amino acid in either the disordered N-terminal or the helical C-terminal part of the peptide. The ligand-binding properties and the efficiencies of these peptide analogues as photolabels were tested for pig brain PACAP receptors. [Bz-Phe6]-PACAP-(1-27)-peptide (Kd 1.3 nM) retained the high binding affinity of PACAP-(1-27)-peptide (Kd 0.5 nM), wheras Bz-Phe substitution of Tyr22 reduced the affinity about tenfold (Kd 4.4 nM) thus demonstrating the importance of Tyr22 for receptor binding. Monoiodination of the photoreactive analogues did not change the binding affinity of the photoreactive analogues. Photoaffinity labeling using pig brain membrane demonstrated that the 125I-labeled photoreactive analogues specifically label a 66000-Mr protein band. Photoaffinity labeling of the rat brain PACAP receptor expressed in COS cells resulted in two specifically photolabeled proteins: a major band of Mr 58000 and a minor band of Mr 78000. By treatment of photolabeled membranes with N-glycosidase F, both of the polypeptide bands were converted to a single polypeptide band of Mr 54000, which corresponds to the deglycosylated PACAP receptor. Despite its lower receptor affinity, [Bz-Phe22]-PACAP-(1-27)-peptide labeled the PACAP type I receptor in pig brain membranes and the rat receptor expressed in COS cells with much higher efficiency (20-fold for the pig receptor) than [Bz-Phe6]-PACAP-(1-27)-peptide. These findings suggest that Tyr22 in PACAP-(1-27)-peptide is located in or close to the hormone-binding site of the PACAP type I receptor. The results provide evidence that the alpha-helical C-terminal region of PACAP is directly involved in receptor binding."
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I need to look into photoaffinity labeling more. Combine that with engineered protien crystallization, and hmmm....

Soft Tissues From T. rex Fossil

AAAS - AAAS News Release: "A recently discovered Tyrannosaurus rex fossil appears to contain elastic soft tissues, blood vessels and cells, researchers report in the 25 March 2005 issue of the journal Science.

Tissues other than bone can be preserved in the fossil record, but it's usually difficult to determine their original form and composition in fossils more than a few million years old. These findings show that soft tissues can be clearly preserved for much longer, since this T. rex specimen, known as MOR 1125, is roughly 70 million years old.

Mary Higby Schweitzer and colleagues noticed unusual tissue fragments lining the marrow cavity of the MOR 1125 femur. When they dissolved the mineral deposits in the tissues, the authors were left with a flexible, stretchy material threaded with what looked like blood vessels. The treatment also released some thin, transparent soft tissue vessels that floated freely in the solution. These vessels resemble vessels from modern-day ostrich bone, the authors report.

Both the dinosaur and ostrich vessels also contained small, reddish brown dots that might be nuclei of the 'endothelial' cells that line blood vessels. Certain portions of the T. rex bone also contained fibril-like structures that looked virtually identical to bone cells called 'osteocytes' seen among collagen fibers in the ostrich bone.

The exquisite preservation of this tissue, which does not challenge the timing of dinosaur evolution, may open up avenues for studying dinosaur physiology and perhaps some aspects of their biochemistry, especially if researchers can identify soft tissues in other fossils as well."
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That is pretty wild. Imagine this plot, scientist clone dinosaurs, grow them on a tropical island, and then they run amok, causing a blockbuster trilogy of movies. Oh wait, someone did that already.

Yahoo! News - Senate Votes to Open Alaskan Oil Drilling

Yahoo! News - Senate Votes to Open Alaskan Oil Drilling: "By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Amid the backdrop of soaring oil and gasoline prices, a sharply divided Senate on Wednesday voted to open the ecologically rich Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, delivering a major energy policy win for President Bush."
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Great. If we want to get off of foreign oil, why aren't we increasing fuel efficiency? Oh right, we're short sighted and profit driven. The easy, Republican-friendly plot is enviro terrorists doing something to stop it but the FBI prevents it. Better is for the bad guys to be foreign oil agents, or perhaps they are in cahoots, or even one group is playing the other.

Even better is to have it happen and then show the long term economic and environmental impact. The setting of a near future novel could be scientists trying to recover from the damage, or a world where Korea took over as the dominant source for vehicles since we failed to pursue the new technology.

Yahoo! News - Large Plume Billows From Mount St. Helens

Yahoo! News - Large Plume Billows From Mount St. Helens: "MOUNT ST. HELENS, Wash. - Mount St. Helens released a towering plume of ash Tuesday, its most significant emission in months but one that seismologists did not believe heralded any major eruption."
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Remember that movie Dante's Peak with Pierce Brosnan and that serious off road Suburban? Great thriller that didn't get much recognition.

Yahoo! News - Few Clues on Dolphin Deaths in Florida Keys

Yahoo! News - Few Clues on Dolphin Deaths in Florida Keys: "By Laura Myers

SUMMERLAND KEY, Fla. (Reuters) - Biologists are investigating whether sonar used in U.S. Navy (news - web sites) submarine exercises or red tide bacteria contributed to the deaths of more than 30 rough-toothed dolphins in a mass stranding in the Florida Keys last week."
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Sad and weird. It sounds like the opening of a thriller. Hopefully they will figure it out, though I didn't think you could get decompression sickness unless you breathe compressed air at depth. Skin diving, which the dolphins do, can't result in it. Unless I missed something.